A Better Role For Journals

The way it works now is you write a paper then you send it to a journal and they review it and decide whether to publish it. The basic unit is the paper. What if we made the author the basic unit? Instead of inviting submissions, Econometrica invites applications for the position of author. Some number of authors are accepted and they can write whatever they want and have it published in Econometrica. The term would be temporary, maybe 1 year.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to just write the paper you want to write, not the paper that the referees want you to write? The quality of papers would unambiguously increase. After all, your acceptance is a done deal, anything you write will be published, why bother writing anything less than the most interesting idea that is currently on your mind.

Quality control is achieved by rotating in the authors currently writing the most interesting stuff. Once the current slate of authors is chosen, there is no need anymore for referees or editors. But if you want peer review, you can have that too. Anyone wishing to prepare a referee report is invited to do so, they can even do it anonymously if they want and even make it open to the public. The journal might even want to append the reports onto the published paper.

Come to think of it, these journals already exist: blogs. Cheap Talk invites you to apply to be an author guest blogger. (Past and current holders of this position include Roger Myerson, Lones Smith and Jeroen Swinkels.)

9 comments

[…] From Jeff: The way it works now is you write a paper then you send it to a journal and they review it and decide whether to publish it. The basic unit is the paper. What if we made the author the basic unit? Instead of inviting submissions, Econometrica invites applications for the position of author. Some number of authors are accepted and they can write whatever they want and have it published in Econometrica. The term would be temporary, maybe 1 year. […]

“After all, your acceptance is a done deal, anything you write will be published, why bother writing anything less than the most interesting idea that is currently on your mind.”

I’m afraid it will rather be: “why bother writing anything new – just regurgitate your last paper’s introduction and follow up with a tiny wrinkle or special case of what you already published half a year ago. And save the real work for papers where referees will keep you from making your life too easy.” Longer publication list = better chance at tenure & more research grants.

No, I certainly do *not* think that the quality of papers would increase, and especially not “unambiguously”.

Just what the profession needs: more opinionated pieces with less requirements of rigor. Though this blog in particular has been more carefully articulated than others (who have proven Nobel-worthy), do we really want more half-baked, less-carefully-argued ideas? In the words of the immortal Jerry Seinfeld: Just what the city needs! More slow-moving, wicker vehicles.